Slashdot Mirror
Olympics to Have Live Online Coverage, But Not For Americans
Rytsarsky writes "According to this AP story (mirror), live video from the Olympics will be viewable online. However, 'the footage will be highly restricted to protect lucrative broadcast contracts, which are sold by territory - $793 million paid by NBC alone. Web sites must employ technology to block viewers from outside their home countries, so U.S. Web surfers won't benefit from the BBC's live coverage. They'll have to settle for highlights posted after NBC broadcasts, which are already largely tape-delayed.'" Interestingly, this AP wire story was picked up by CNN.com (it was at this URL and this URL), ran for a few hours, and now has been removed - I guess CNN didn't think it was newsworthy. *shrug*
Will the Ruling help Tivo owners across national boarders?
Just use an open proxy in Europe and you'll be wathing the games live as well.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Can we expect to see these available for download with BT? Almost every other TV show is...
"Follow the money."
At least since Los Angeles in 1984 (which is as long as I've been following it), it hasn't been about sport or competition or peace.
It's been about bribery, profits, and raking in the dough.
So does any of this surprise us?
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
IIRC, icravetv.com used a zip code based system to identify their "legal" (canadian) users from their "illegal" (american) users. Type in a Canadian zip code and off you go.
On top of that, U.S. viewers must verify their identity using a credit card from Visa - an NBC advertiser - though they will not be charged.
Not a Visa cardholder? You're out of luck.
Interesting but not surprising. I'm surprised you don't have to prove you were one of the 8% of the population that ate at McDonalds that day...
Some European broadcasters are limiting video to high-speed, broadband customers only, seeking to keep foreigners from connecting via international phone calls.
Oh fuck you, give me a break, no one is going to download Olympics video over dialup via an international call. It's just not worth it. Perhaps AmEx would love for you to pay for that call on their card?
"Of course you get frustrated you can't do everything you want, but compared to four years ago, this is incredibly much better," said Kristian Elster, who works on the Web site for Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Maybe in Norway you can't see the shit on TV. NBC comes over the air here and you see a ton of stuff. Most of the really boring shit is on during the day and they play the important races at prime time (live or not). Watching video via the net doesn't impress me.
Fans are the ultimate winners, Joerg said. Even with some 12,000 hours of total TV coverage across Europe, "you cannot cover all," he said. "Broadband and mobile technology can complement the traditional television coverage."
No you can't and most of it sucks anyway. What's shown is generally the important/good stuff. At least in my experience. 1250 hours of coverage is a lot.
It doesn't seem like "ad companies" are directly involved. NBC pays $700+ million and as part of the contract want exclusive rights to US broadcast. Being dumbasses, they think they can apply this to online broadcasts so they write that into the contract.
Worldwide outlets that carry the Olympics then are bound in their contracts to honor the exclusivity of other contracts, including NBC's for the US. So they have to try to block access for US "viewers." Sure ad revenue is the reason for the exclusive contracts, but it's the networks and the IOC (or whoever sells the broadcast rights) that are trying to control internet access.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
so, what's to stop a high-speed provider in the UK from setting up a squid proxy with the "forwarded_for off" line in the config? I mean, come on, really this is utterly retarded.
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
"Should we let Ad companies dictate not only what we can or cannot see on televison, but what we can, or cannot access via Interent?"
Seeing as how they're paying the bills...
Well, if that's your attitude, don't come complaining about any perceived "conservative" or "liberal" bias in the media. Unless you're the advertiser paying said media to be biased the way you tell them to be, of course.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Thats fine I suppose....
But is it really that important?
I look at it this way... if the people who run the olympics are so deeply in corperate broadcasters pcokets that they are willing to put up restrictions like this... do I even want to give them the benefit of watching?
I think not. I thought it was bad enough when I realised how political the whole Olympic Games were. Now that it seems to be going more and more corperate, its finnaly the last straw.
I will not be watching a single Olympic event, on the internet, on TV, hearing it on the radio etc. They are, as far as I am concerned, a complete non-event so much so that they may as well not even happen. The entire circus is dead to me.
I shall, from this day forward acknoledge the olympics in only 2 ways.
1. As a part of History. Obviously they happened. They caused traffic jams in whatever city they were in, etc.
2. I shall henceforth encourage all others who mention the Olympics to join me in not watching it.
Wont you join me too? Does it really matter? Sure its cool to watch people run around and compete at physical things, but is it really worth supporting these large corperations that are happy to engage in agreements that take away your choice as a consumer just to squeeze a few more dollars into their already overflowing coffers?
This is simple greed, and I have a personal problem with it. Hence, I will do something that even the libertarians out there can't disagree with. I am voting with my eyes and my dollars. I am not watching the olympics and avoiding anything that supports is.
Its not that this is the be all nd end all, it was entirely too nationalistic and corperate long before this, this is just the straw that broke this camels back.
Wont you join me?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Now everyone thinks I can't even handle HTML.
Nah, I just thought you were getting gradually more and more agitated in your post. I was waiting for the all caps to break out at any moment.
I share in your disapproval of blackout restrictions for MLB.TV. If it's being broadcast on television, what difference does it make what medium I choose to watch it on?
If I watch a game on FOX (which I can pick up on a TV antenna for FREE) or on my computer (a service which I pay for), I'm going to be seeing the exact same content - INCLUDING the commercials. What does FOX have to lose by having the game rebroadcast over the Internet?
Isn't tax payer money going to support our USA teams? If so I think we have a basic right to see them perform.
I'm a little upset that the olympics is now becoming a pay per view type event with exclusive deals to big companies to distribute. This was once an event that unified the world in healthy competition, all in good fun. Now it's gone corporate and is gouging people.
I'll admit I could care less about a lot of the events, but that's possibly just because I never get to see them and appreciate them. As it is, I never know what events are going on or when. The athletes I don't know by name etc etc.
The olympics IMHO has a PR problem. They are failing to reach younger folks who would normally be the ones to care about this and are therefore losing ground to the X Games and similar events. I don't even know anyone these days that gives a shit about the olympics. Most people I talk to about it just shrug and forget it.
Ok, so we just bounce off somewhere overseas and it wont know the difference..
They do this now with races, they black out the local area and penalize the locals that dont get to go... but let everyone else in the world see what is happening..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What's boring to NBC and you may be quite interesting to another American. Of course, NBC will broadcast those sports that appeal to the largest group of American TV watchers. But that shouldn't give them the right to totally prevent others from watching other sports. At least, they wouldn't be given this right in a free country.
The CNN execs probably decided it would play better on CNN International, rather than add to the antiAmerican bashing by the liberal media.
I'm curious. What are you thinking of? I've seen relatively little bashing of America by the American media. Criticism of Bush, sure, but he's hardly America.
If I criticize one of my town official's actions, am I bashing my town?
May we never see th
"Seeing as how they're paying the bills..."
Well, unless their burning capital, the customers are the ones really paying the bills.
2: I think the Olympics are a tedious pile of shite, so I don't have to!
(Wait, that means the BBC has blown an ungodly amount of money on something I have no interest in, and it'll be sport, sport, sport all summer long... So, actually, no changes there. Carry on!)
You must think in Russian.
The Olympics have always been broadcast in the US with substandard coverage and a ridiculously low useful-programming-to-commercials ratio. Want to watch an actual long-distance track event? You're SOL. Want to see an event before hearing the results? If it's deemed ratings-worthy, you'll have to wait for prime time. And why? So that execs can line their pockets with ad revenue. There is no freedom of the press because corporations run the country. When are consumers going to stand up and say that they've had enough of this? It's ridiculous! Seriously, watch a taped broadcast of anything from 10 years ago. There are less commercials per break, and less commercial breaks per show. We're getting less and less while networks make more and more, and why? Because no one does anything about it! Now NBC has a monopoly on Olympic coverage in the US and they're actively preventing anyone from circumventing the monopoly. I don't know about anyone else, but I, for one, will be streaming Olympic coverage as much as possible, even if I'm not watching it, as a sort of silent protest.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
Since its their page, and they are under NO legal obligation to retain them, they can pull any story at any time.
This is a danger of online media, its a bit harder to pull a story out of a newspaper after its in the subscribers hands..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In other news... ;)
:) ;)
The Olympic Games are off-limits to those wearing clothing clearly sporting logos or slogans of companies who are direct competitors of companies sponsoring The Olympic Games.
This is a measure mostly aimed towards preventing a group of people wearing shirts that would spell out a company name which would be clearly visible in any televised broadcast, but e.g. a cap sporting Pepsi, when Coca~Cola is the sponsor, would be forbidden as well. Or vice-versa, can't say I care which one's sponsoring
In additional news, athletes are once again told not to write about the olympics online. This is the same measure taken last time around in Australia - though not enforced too strictly.
And in entirely unrelated news, but on a level of "Boohoo - us poor Americans"
Boohoo, us poor rest-of-the-worlders - we can't bid on Google IPO stock
Global company - global search engine - Americans First (Only?)
We didn't have a revolution, but still have at least the promise of decent Olympics coverage. That's the theory, anyway: the last couple of times have been dominated by talking heads, cutesy "background" spots (especially the Sydney Olympics), and general chatter about almost everything but sports.
They also had a nasty habit of telling us that Canadians placed 5th, 10th and 21st, but never told who actually won.
...laura
This is slashdot. \. is Liberal, it leans to the left.
Slashdot is anything but liberal, as you'd know if you ever read any of the gun control arguments that seem to break out in completely unrelated threads.
Slashdot users are generally libertarian. Which is a completely different thing from "liberal". Libertarians believe government has no place whatsoever in their lives, which is why you get stories like Google's mismanagement of their IPO listed under the "your rights online" tag. This is pretty much the exact opposite of what liberals believe. If anything, libertarians lean a lot more towards the conserative side, since both supposedly believe in smaller government (though in practice, most so-called "conservatives" only believe in smaller government in areas where it suits them - not, for example, in a smaller military or in cuts to social security).
Now, I am not a libertarian, I am a liberal (and btw, we liberals have nothing against big business, just big business that breaks the law, ie. Microsoft or Enron). Obviously, not all Slashdot users are the same. But the general gist of things here is usually that all government meddling in technology is bad, which explains the calls of "censorship" in this thread (even though government is not even involved) or the complaints about "rights" being infringed (as if watching TV is a "right", which implies that it's either something you're born with [as in an "inalienable" right] or it's something written into law, or both). As a liberal, I often feel extremely out of place here in actually not always arguing against government regulation of various things if it makes sense - I evaluate everything on a case by case basis. But what business does, as long as they're not breaking any laws, is business.
I personally think this whole Olympics thing is pretty damn stupid from a business standpoint, and not at all helpful to the Olympics as a whole (interest in the Olympics in the US has been dropping since the 1980's, partly because of the shoddy live TV coverage). But my "rights" are not being trampled on here; just the long-term viability of the Olympics themselves. Once these games are over, I expect to once again see a lot of bitching about the poor TV coverage, a lot of bitching by NBC about the low ratings and a lot of bitching by the Olympic committee about the lack of interest. If you ask me, none of them have anybody to blame but themselves.
Y'know, British folks are paying for the BBC website through our (all-but-) mandatory TV license fee, I don't really see why this should be opened up to people in other countries.
If you want TV without ads, move to the UK and pay your £116 (about $180 I guess) a year for it, otherwise stick with the service you get in the US, and don't expect the 60 million folks in the UK to pay for a service for 300 million folks in the US.
And NBC didn't do the same? One of the few times I made the mistake of watching NBC I caught the triathlon. They spent the whole time on the Americans who were well back from the lead. They didn't even show or discuss the medal winners.
Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...
In case you wondered if this has been made up, Google News still lists one of the CNN URL on top of news stories with keywords "olympics online".
I, however, find it incredible that NBC would offer "1,210 hours of coverage spread across NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a high-definition channel" and none of it live. All I'm going to see is whatever bits of the highlights-they-deign-offer-us-in-lieu-of-full-cov erage [broken /. lameness filter turned 'coverage' into 'cov erage'] that happen to be on as I'm surfing past NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and USA on my way to something worth watching (we don't get Telemundo or any high-def channels).
NBC offers the worst sports coverage of any American network, so naturally they get the Olympics. The fact that the IOC cares more about the $$$ than the quality of the coverage speaks volumes about the true nature of the Olympics. If I wanted delayed coverage I'd read about it in tomorrow's newspaper, which is exactly what I will do for the few sports I care about. And I'll bet I get the results from the newspapers before NBC shows us the highlights.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Further proof that US style capitalism is eating itself. The American consumer is what we call a running dog. This is an old Mongolian analogy of a hunting dog that fetches the birds his master shoots. In ancient Mongolia, when all the birds were shot, the master would then shoot and eat the dog. This is a perfect analogy for the American consumer. The game is up, so it is time to eat the dog.
This is just one example. The whole MP3 game is another similar instance. The game is up, so eat the dog. If there were still game to hunt then you wouldn't want to attack the consumer that is supposedly your partner, but the master can see that there is no more game, so it is time to eat the dog.
The master can see the situation clearly. The crown jewels of America's technological advantage, telecommunications, have been lost. The game is over. Time to eat the dog.
Fascinating how one's intuition can swerve so wildly from an expressed ideology. One can say that one is libertarian - because one "believes" in unlimited personal freedom. And yet for many, that belief manifests in decrying the interference of a private party in their choices.
I think the intuition is right and the ideology is wrong. Freedom is not a rule but a fuzzy state of social ordering, and it absolutely requires restraint - in other words, oppression - to be effectively realized. Is society more "free" when NBC can, because of its market position, secure exlcusive rights to broadcast the olympics and then choose to parcel broadcasts out in chopped up bits, or when the government oppresses private parties by preventing such arrangements or enforcing mandatory licensing - squeezing the choices of broadcasters but increasing access for viewers? Off-topic, I know....